Surfacing
by pyrrhy
Summary: X2/Highlander crossover. Lyman wasn't Methos, though I like to pretend he was. And, since we can't possibly just leave the Really Old Guy languishing at the bottom of a lake somewhere...


**Surfacing**

X-Men 2/Highlander crossover. Lyman wasn't Methos, though I like to pretend he was. And, since we can't possibly just leave the Really Old Guy languishing at the bottom of a lake somewhere...

Disclaimer: Just borrowing. Will return. Lyrics belong to the song _Firebird_, by Paul Cotton.

* * *

One would expect him to know better. Methos did, too.

Times were, though, when no amount of experience could deter the spirit of sheer bloody-mindedness. Forget inquiring minds; when the going gets tough, the tough start packing. Or should have. And Methos _really _ought to have known better, if nothing else, by sheer dint of the amount of time he'd spent schlepping about the four corners of the earth. Require a little insight into the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything? Just ask the old guy. But all knowledge was provisional, anyway, and search for that ultimate truth all you wanted—the bottom line of immortality was that dying and coming back to life really, really hurt.

Some times more so than others.

His eyes snapped open, his chest expanding reflexively on a gasp for air. Bad idea. Methos choked on liquid pain as water surged down his gullet, burning a path of agony through his sinuses. He gagged. Panic and instinct followed on the heels of that abortive breath, and he began to thrash convulsively, limbs moving torture-slow through the confines of his most recent grave.

Silence encompassed his hearing, a deep hollowness that droned through his ears. Icy darkness entombed him, too black to see, and liquid settled heavily inside his lungs like a weight, like death, murky and thick. Alarms shrilled like klaxons inside Methos's head, overriding rational thought as five millennia of instincts were subsumed beneath a wave of atavistic, unadulterated terror. Methos thrashed around some more, the constricting, leaden drag on his arms and legs spurring him to new heights of panic. Life bubbled out through his mouth and nostrils, escaping upwards, out of his reach. He couldn't breathe, couldn't draw in air.

_Underwater_, it finally registered on him. And as soon as the thought connected, Methos forced his body to still, brutally throttling down the panic shrieking for attention at the forefront of his thoughts. Later, not now. When he had more than a precious few seconds left to life, Methos promised himself, he could have all the hysterics he wanted.

The slowly retreating flood of his terror left Methos feeling light-headed, and the oxygen deprivation wasn't helping, either. Methos could feel his heart battering frantically against his ribcage, working to make up for his previous exertions. The urge for a fresh breath ripped at Methos like hunger. The god of his flesh was a tyrant, and it demanded its tribute. And it was funny, Methos thought distractedly, how it always all boiled down to this, five thousand years or no: flesh and organs, sustenance and air. There was no escaping the demands of the body that held his mind and his Quickening. But it was a fleeting digression, and Methos spared it all the attention it deserved at the moment. Abstract, asphyxia-induced witterings, like his sharply-increasing desire to flail about uselessly screaming, were activities best reserved for another, preferably less damp, occasion.

He'd wasted enough of his time reviving.

Methos abruptly felt his lungs cramp as though in response to the thought. _Really ought to work on that timing_, he thought irrelevantly. This was a little too much irony, even for him.

He let himself drift aimlessly through the cold blackness for a moment before casting about for a landmark. The sound of water parting rippled in his ears. His hands encountered rubble, twisted steel. Methos carefully kicked his legs to propel himself forwards, heeding the warning stutter of his heartbeat, the momentary greying of his sight. Currents streamed over and past him, raking through his hair and clinging sullenly to the material of his clothing. The weight of a thousand metric tons of water overhead enforced a crushing silence, interrupted only by the occasional liquid gurgle and the dull accompaniment of his heart.

Methos bumped into the convex plane of a wall and traced it with his palms, following it up. With blind, searching fingertips, Methos skimmed the bowed ceiling only to find it whole and unmarred, sandpaper-rough against his frail, water-softened skin. Exploring further, Methos only discovered more unbroken concrete, which no amount of pushing would budge.

_Trapped_, something whispered thinly, though Methos tried not to listen too hard.

Spots of not-white flared before his vision. Methos knew his body was fast-reaching what limits of endurance it had—but not now not yet, let him find a way out of here before he shut down again completely, shut down only to face (_again and again and again_) that inexorable, tortuous upwards crawl back towards awareness. Methos spared a second to curse silently, teeth bared in a rictus more of animal fear than anger. He was already blacking out, his thoughts grey, eyes uselessly wide against the darkness, faltering heartbeat a hollow echo in his ears, impossibly loud, his movements sluggish.

He was trapped, his mind babbled helplessly. It was the grenades, and his last thought was of the gun in his hands, its ridged lattice-work grip conveying something solid and hard, powerful—but goddamn, he should have _known_ to bail, but now it was too late—there were footsteps around the corridor, echoing faintly, metal pins levitating into the air: _ohshitohshit_, metal was the key and it was just as well that Methos didn't have his sword on him—and that was a _really_ dorky helmet, and Methos should know, as cloaked man and naked _blue_ woman stalked towards them—

_The damn slipway flooded_, Methos realised in a latent burst of clarity. He was trapped underwater in the tunnels, and the slipway had flooded.

Oh, yes, Methos had definitely fulfilled his quota for stupidity for the next one hundred years or so. Too curious for his own damn good, and there was a joke in there somewhere, about cats and water...

And then his lungs _really_ started to cramp. Methos deliberately inhaled another lungful of lake water, hastening the process towards death and his subsequent revival. Better to forget the dread, and resign himself to this. The tunnels stretched for miles; it could be _years_ before he made his way out of this one—

_Ah_, he thought, blackly humourous in his final moment of lucidity. _It's going to be another one of _those...

* * *

Methos tried to be blasé about it, he really did. But reviving a million miles underwater just wasn't something a guy got used to, no matter how many times he did it.

Methos felt his lungs ache, straining for air, the urge to breathe in anyway a screaming imperative he had to work to overcome. Failed to overcome, as the next minute saw him scrabbling mindlessly at the concrete arch of the tunnel ceiling, consciousness dark with the growing realisation that he would never get out of here, would live and die eternally unless he should manage to accidentally sever his head on something sharp, fucking damn hellhole, and this was hell, never-ending agony of awareness and darkness, awareness, death, life, lungs saturated with nothing, choking, it was penance, penance, this death, dying—

* * *

_—dying—_

_—nothing—_

_—burningwaterendlesslyhelpmehelp— _

* * *

_—wake. _

Wings of flame, Apollo's chariot tracing the arc of space, Quickening-light—Quickening-force—wreathed in lines of phoenix fire over skin and bone and flesh and sinew. He saw fire and water, and fire and air. He was borne upon warmth and strength, filtering through the liquid depths like a bird passing through the sky. Presence invaded his mind, soul-deep and enveloping.

This was him (_I_). His life flickered past him, memories of sensation and sight, the feel of a breeze, dirtbloodsweat sweet his smile the edge of his blade on his knees behind, puppy-dark eyes and Gathering, light, no-death, a stone, a bridge, curve of smile and breast, drowning, dying, he would live forever in the dark—

He had been taken, subsumed. And this was what it felt like, for your Quickening to be absorbed into another, made part of a whole. The body was no longer his to care for, nor his to obey. There was a delirious joy to be found in the thought, that he was free of it at last, distilled to his most essential, refined awareness unrestrained by the coils and twists of flesh. Immortal flesh, grasping, unforgiving, its chokehold on life so jealous, so tight the soul could not stretch, had no place to flee. He extended his senses, reached out curiously with fingers that were not there.

_Who are you? _

Warmth, the sensation of red hair and steady eyes, in this place that was no-place that knew neither indignation nor rage, his awareness cradled by a web of sensation, that insisted, _wake. wake_...

Wake, there was light ahead, hurtling brilliance splintered by movement, illumination spreading, expanding beyond the edges of his vision, so bright it hurt—

* * *

Methos came to on the banks of the newly-flooded lake.

_Don't breathe, stop_—holding it until self-preservation and biological imperative kicked in and Methos spasmed, jaws unclenching for a timid sip, then opening wider as frigid air instead of liquid flooded his system.

Air—_oh jesus_—and it hurt to breathe, hurt to think, to move. His throat burned. His heart hammered madly, a violent staccato in his chest, the sound of his pulse boiling rich in his ears. Alive, by the gods, _he lived_, and the air had never tasted sweeter. Methos drank it in like a drug, taking great gulps of it, gorging himself on oxygen until his shoulders heaved, and his stomach caught up with the rest of his body, and he retched up its contents on the crisp, crystalline snow.

It was a while before Methos stopped vomiting, another while more before he gathered his thoughts. With methodical movements, he stripped off his boots, then his cammies, preferring to stand around in the buff than in his clinging, damp uniform. He'd dry faster, at any rate. Methos had had more than enough of water to last him the rest of his life. Snow tingled between his bare toes, damp-cold and burning, reminding him of the dangers of frostbite. The dagger he wore at the small of his back was the last to go, tossed casually atop the waterlogged pile of discarded clothing. Between the lake and the prospect of wandering around provisionless until he got his bearings, Methos would take his chances with exposure and hypothermia.

Sunlight reflected blindingly off the snow. It was a cloudless day, unusually still. The sky was grey and clear and seemed to go on forever. It reminded Methos of when the skyline had never seen a city, and would stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. He lifted his face to the sun, grateful for the pale warmth spreading like a benediction, like prayer, across his skin. A chill, stray breeze bit his cheek in warning before rolling over him in a wave. Methos shuddered all over, feeling goosebumps rise in its wake, and bit back a grunt of noise, half surprise, half delighted relief.

Methos gathered his clothes and started to wring them out, tipping his boots over to rid them of water. Beside him, the lake lapped mutely at the shores of its new bank, smooth and mysterious. The basin of Alkali Lake was flooded, the visible surface structures of Stryker's installation entirely submerged beneath the water. Only the sky showed in the gunmetal surface, a reflection of colour and fractured light, each shiver and wavelet chased with silver from the wan noon sun. It reminded Methos of fire dancing over water, invoked the memory of flame—

Methos frowned. The thought niggled persistently, taking up residence in his head and announcing its disinclination to leave until Methos traced it back to its source. Giving in to it, Methos delved a little further back. The tunnels, beneath Stryker's base. They'd flooded over, every single damn one of them. And Methos had been trapped inside, wandering the endless waterways. Theseus inside the Labyrinth; save what stalked him was a fate far worse than anything the Minotaur could have dished out. Methos didn't know how he'd managed to find his way out, but he must have, somehow...

The sense-memory of clawing at brick and concrete roared through his awareness before he hastily thrust it away.

Looking at the lake now, Methos knew it was more than the slipway that had flooded. The dam must have broken as well, to create a flood of this proportion. Those mutants, Methos concluded ruefully, sure packed a punch. Not even the lightning display of an Immortal's Quickening could rival this in terms of sheer destructive power.

So much for Stryker's plans. Methos wondered idly if his employer had made his way to safety before the entire complex blew.

The bastard.

Oh, Methos had known the job was a risky one when he signed on. Risky, and a little more high profile than he might typically have preferred. But Stryker's long, detailed research on mutants had piqued his interest. Methos had long wondered on the freak of the genome that made Immortals or mutants what they were, and Stryker's project had seemed the perfect place to start finding out. _Alea iacta est_, and all that, but there was little Methos hated more than being left with the short end of the stick.

Not to say that it hadn't been an interesting trip, between long sessions of standing guard while Stryker oversaw his various experiments, and covert siphoning off of his employer's data. The physiological peculiarities of mutants were staggeringly varied. No two seemed to share the same traits, yet they were capable of reproduction, and easily traced back to their parents. _Evolution_, Methos considered with a grin. Not quite in the direction Immortals had taken, though perhaps the gap between them was smaller than Methos had imagined. The knowledge felt like an event, something historic. Methos recalled the same thrill of wonderment that had possessed him at moments over the course of his life: the pyramids, television, flight. The world felt fresh all over again, Methos and his sense of awe as new and naïve as that of the next man's. They were on the threshold of change, a new era, and it felt _worth_ something, to simply be there, a witness to the world he had know in the process of becoming.

Methos had found himself particularly interested in that Japanese girl Stryker had tagging along behind him, who healed like an Immortal, if not faster. The temptation to somehow arrange for a similar modification to himself had been keen. It wouldn't be the first time Methos had passed himself off as something he was not, and mutant was as good a label as any, when it came to defining Immortality. Methos examined one hand, gently curling long fingers over his palm. Dangerous, to expose himself, even through a lie, but what would it mean to obtain even one blade as fine as that? Retractable claws, adamantite grafted to his skeleton itself, an unbreakable neck. Simply because _Methos_ didn't believe in the Game did not mean he was spared the prospect of some youngling hieing after him, hungry for a sip of his centuries-old soul. Methos flexed his fingers experimentally, trying to imagine the sensation of metal scraping over bone in that fascinating display of extend and retract. He stared at his hands a while longer before he realised that they were numb and shaking, the fingernails stained blue with cold.

Methos drew himself from his thoughts. His jacket lay forgotten in his hands; he shook it out and spread it over the snow to dry. He chafed his palms against one another, then crossed his arms tightly about himself, trying to hold the warmth in. Forest surrounded him, all bare-branched trees and half-hearted conifers, scrubby low bushes littering the undergrowth. The ground was hard beneath his feet, frozen through. Methos stamped, feeling his teeth chatter, and idly wished that he smoked, or had thought to carry a lighter on him.

_In provision of the unlikelihood of drowning and waking up in the snow_, Methos thought, and he laughed, the sound startlingly loud in the woodland quiet, his breath condensing in small puffs in front of his face. His hilarity was short-lived. Methos felt his shoulders quiver, shaking from more than the cold. A tightly held knot he hadn't realised was inside him burst suddenly, unravelling in a thousand different directions. It hurtled up Methos' chest in a palpable wave, and a sob of condensed emotion spilled from his lips.

What was it he'd promised himself? _Ah, yes. _

Methos settled in to thoroughly enjoy the hysterics due him.

* * *

The sun was setting.

Alkali Lake was a good distance from any establishment that would presume to name itself civilisation. There was a road four kilometres or so from the base—but that had been before the dam had broken. Methos groaned at the thought, and his stomach echoed the sound petulantly; resurrection was a bitch. Up in the Canadian highlands, with nothing to wear and even less to eat. Well, Duncan Mcleod of the Clan Mcleod was welcome to his snow and winters. Methos would keep his climatical preferences, thank you very much. And, in the spirit of that thought, would leave this dreary, desolate, bloody _cold_ place post-haste before he was reduced to a shivering wreck, or got devoured by a moose.

Methos fumbled with the laces, fingers jittering and clumsy in the cold. His nose felt as though it was going to fall off. Ignoring the wet squelch of his boots, he took his bearings from the setting sun and proceeded to make his way down the mountain. The snow was sparse, the earth beneath it packed hard and slippery. Methos skidded once or twice, his limbs clumsy in the numbing cold. His clothing was still damp, and clung to his skin like he knew it would, but Methos had no desire to hang around until he died again, this time from exposure. Locating food and shelter was paramount, now that Methos had the other little inconveniences of drowning and hypothermia out of the way. There ought to be a ranger station somewhere along the way. Methos thought he remembered where it was, from the first sweep Stryker had made of the area before situating his base.

The sky continued to darken in graduating shades of coral and blue, the sun an amber torch that slowly dimmed as it dipped between the hills. And whatever else Methos might think of the Canadian Rockies, he had to admit: they had beautiful sunsets. The tune of a song popped into his head as he watched the sun go down, and Methos whistled a few experimental bars.

It was time to find himself something else to do, something less militaristic in nature. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, maybe. Tropical. Green seas and hot, blazing sun. Picking up his pace, Methos found himself at the chorus of the song, whistling the same notes in repetition while his mind wandered.

How did the rest of it go again? _I want to hear you sing Firebird, I want to fly with you Firebird-  
_  
Bali. Bora-bora. Yes, Bora-bora. Nice this time of year. Tropical, definitely.

_I'm gonna fly with you Firebird... _

Methos wiggled his toes in his sopping boots and found a laugh for himself. It was good to be alive.

And he had a hankering for someplace warm.


End file.
